The Road to Bizerte, Tunisia

Painted in 1909 The Road to Bizerte exhibits an emblematic Orientalist desert scene of an armed man on horseback and a caravan of Bedouins in the background. Although there are no concrete indications Ajdukiewicz painted this in Bizerte, it is known that Ajdukiewicz traveled throughout Northern Africa. Bizerte is uniquely located along the Northern coast of Tunisia mid-way between the Orient and Europe. Furthermore, in 1878 the Treaty of Berlin had granted France control of Bizerte where they built a naval base to increase their strategic power in the region. This European control also allowed travelers, such as Ajdukiewicz, greater access to the region and provided artists with an easy destination to capture the popular Orientalist subject matter.

In the present work Ajdukiewicz utilizes light and color in innovative ways. In the foreground Ajdukiewicz uses a palette knife to paint with thick impasto in a painterly impressionist style. The rocks and sand radiate from the surface of the canvas suggesting their mass. The central man and horse capture the viewer's attention with their tight brushwork and vibrant saturated colors. In the sky Ajdukiewicz adjusts to softer and smoother brushstrokes and uses whitened earth-tones to suggest the light dust of the midday dessert sun. Ajdukiewicz pays special attention to the way dust reacts to the light creating a beautiful mid-day dessert atmosphere of blues, yellows, pinks, whites and flecks of red.